http://www.rajibroy.com/index.htmlRandom Notesenroy_rajib@yahoo.comCopyright 2008 Rajib Roy2010-06-06T11:55:44-04:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sun, 7 Sep 2008 17:31:59 -0400roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2010-06-06T11:55:44-04:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/a66c44fd009edf9e46f0a523ff35176e-8.html#unique-entry-id-8http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/a66c44fd009edf9e46f0a523ff35176e-8.html#unique-entry-id-8Very nicely written article by Sidin Vadukut. The original link is here.

Are you who you work for?
How conscious are you of your employer’s name? Is this a critical part of your self-identity? But why?
Cubiclenama | Sidin Vadukut

It took place a few weeks ago on the large “party lawns” of a respectable club in south Delhi—the annual get-together of the local chapter of my alma mater’s alumni association.
There were the retired civil service types who saved time and effort by arriving pre-drunk. And then there were the children who hadn’t even graduated yet, but came along for the “networking” and “image building”.
In one corner was the dot-com millionaire. Everyone wanted to talk to him. And he obliged politely. Every few minutes someone, usually an approximate batchmate, put an arm around him and led him away saying: “Boss, I have this brilliant idea. With a little bit of seed capital…”
Then there was the branding guru, the buff investment banker, the noble-minded, good-hearted yet Gucci- wearing NGO type, and the young, handsome journalist.
If attended in moderation, these alumni meets are a good way to gauge how people moved up, down and sideways in their professional lives. The most popular conversation starters were: “What do you do nowadays?”, “Who do you work for?”, “Didn’t you top our batch? Are you still with Lehman? Oh, how sad”.
Which is when I began to notice how so many people were extremely conscious of their employer’s identity. So much of who they think they are, it seemed, was an outcome of who they worked for.
In many cases, the individual in question has five or six years of work experience, is a Senior something or the other, has a family with children, and a flat in Greater Noida Extension Annex. (“Just 12km from Agra railway station.”)
Overall, not a bad list of achievements for someone who is just 30 or 32 years old. And once, when asked in a job interview where he saw himself in five years, said, “Bandra??”
Yet, just ask him who he works for and suddenly he looks deflated. His eyes twitch and he tries to avoid the question. “Oh, hmm, eh, a small private equity fund, small firm, really quite new, big risk, look Ginger Chicken on a toothpick!”
In contrast, there are the fellows who know that just saying Unilever, McKinsey or Mint is enough. No further elaboration is necessary. The brand power of your employer’s name, it appears, anoints you in its glory.
Now there are cases in which I can understand this hesitation to reveal employer name. Perhaps you work for a company that has one of those really corny names. Such as “Reilly, Knotty, Thoughts and Co.” or “TrainChildrenToEvadeTaxes.com”.
Or perhaps you work for a company that has recently been involved in some form of crisis. “Hi. Currently I take care of Environmental Protection Engineering. For a British company. A petroleum company. A British petroleum company. Stop talking to me.”
How conscious are you of your employer’s name? Is it a critical part of your self-identity? Would you make career choices based on this? Would you have, hypothetically speaking, joined a start-up called Google, Amazon or Apple?
Or, rather, would you have evaded risk and joined respectable-sounding names that you can brandish with pride?
While the alumni party highlighted the social import of employers prominently, I will recount here an old story that maybe makes this point better.
In engineering college in 2001, there was no bigger name than Cisco Systems when it came to campus placements. Everyone wanted the job, the glamour and the great salary package. During their presentation, a Cisco hand summoned up a PowerPoint slide that predicted what stock options issued to new hires would be worth in five or 10 years.
There were many, many zeros. A hush fell over the hall. Which was finally broken by the noise of a civil engineer, not eligible to apply for Cisco, sobbing into his hanky.
Later that night, after recruitment procedures, a new Cisco hire ran to the institute telephone booth. A bunch of us waited outside to hear him call home. “Papa! I got a job in Cisco!”
We could hear the whoops of joy, and the sound of yellow cellophane paper being ripped off boxes of burfi.
“Thank you Papa. Please arrange a trip to Tirupathi. I join in Bangalore in July.”
Papa was confused. He said that Tisco did not have a plant in Bangalore. Only in Jamshedpur.
Son clarified. Cisco not Tisco.
The whooping stopped. Burfi pieces were recalled.
“Son,” his dad said, “please call back when you get a job in a proper company like Tisco. How will I tell people you work for some Khisko in Bangalore?”
The boy had to be revived all night with Old Monk and cola.
Who do you work for? Are you cringing at the thought of admitting that? Send discreet email confessions.
Cubiclenama takes a weekly look at the pleasures and perils of corporate life. Your comments are welcome at cubiclenama@livemint.com]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-11-25T18:45:52-05:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/0db5ca72edd7f75e9e26a6cc685d5e39-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/0db5ca72edd7f75e9e26a6cc685d5e39-5.html#unique-entry-id-5Eight hours in a tree suit??? Boy, these cops are dedicated...

Original news here

Tree suits! German cops' secret weapon
20/11/2008 12:49:00 PM.  | LIVENEWS.com.au

German police have gone to new lengths to nab a serial burglar – dressing up in tree suits and waiting in a forest for eight hours.

After getting a tip-off about a burglar’s hideout containing laptops, clothes and equipment used for robberies, a detective came up with the novel approach of arresting the culprit.

One police inspector told German tabloid newspaper Bild, “I discussed with my colleague how we could camouflage ourselves in the forest.

“Then we discovered the suit in a mail-order catalogue and bought two for €100 each – out of our own pockets.”

The two officers then reportedly waited in the forest near the burglar’s property for the man to return.

Eight hours later, he did.

“As we jumped up from the ground, we were immediately attacked. But we were able to overwhelm and arrest the man,” the inspector said.

They arrested a 39-year-old Romanian man, who had travelled to Germany specifically for the break-ins, the newspaper reported.

“We were able to recover the stolen laptops. That made spending our own money worthwhile.”]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-11-09T21:44:53-05:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/235412612f000a1f6f1224e794d2e6d7-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/235412612f000a1f6f1224e794d2e6d7-4.html#unique-entry-id-4
I have been using OpenOffice.org for a couple of weeks. So far, it has worked brilliantly. I can open Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents, make edits and then save them back as Word, Excel, Powerpoint or many other formats. This is what I was looking for quite some time. I am sure this does not support some deep functionality - which I never use anyways. The interoperability is great!

Now only if I can get an Outlook like application. (one of the rare Microsoft tools I like. Mac's email is not very powerful)

I am not a big fan of switching OSes on the same hardware or run Windows inside of the Leopard OS. Looking for pure and clean solution, I guess.

Cheers,
Rajib]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-11-02T18:34:42-05:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/367e0f07f8e4ede47a27408ca7d3c822-3.html#unique-entry-id-3http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/367e0f07f8e4ede47a27408ca7d3c822-3.html#unique-entry-id-3
Needless to say, I came up with quite a few answers. But within 5 minutes, I convinced myself that there must be a better goal. And of course, I have been thinking about this even harder.

Finally I am coming to one conclusion - how clueless I am in my overall goal of life :-) Sure I can name well being of family, financial security and all those things. But I get this feeling immediately - I should be able to get those done myself. I need to use the superpower to attempt to achieve something else.

And I have not yet come up with that highest sublime goal for myself...

What would you do?]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-09-14T17:25:16-04:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/1d1dbad9391b1bdad80164077802f31b-2.html#unique-entry-id-2http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/1d1dbad9391b1bdad80164077802f31b-2.html#unique-entry-id-2
But the best feature yet is the face recognition and name tagging from the same. Unfortunately, this is available only for the Web albums and not on the desktop software. Not terribly sure why. The face recognition, while not perfect, is very good. Try it out to see how cool it is.

And everything is free!!!

Now the bad piece of news is there is no Mac version for Picasa 3.0. Which is a bummer for Mac fans like me. Still, you can upload iPhoto pictures into Picasaweb. While it allows automatic Picasaweb tag creation from the iPhoto keywords, it does not allow vice versa. So, you cannot get the recognition done on the web and pull it back into iPhoto library. And there is no plugin for iPhoto to do face recognition worth talking about.]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-09-10T21:47:35-04:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/faab59f265ffb0cf675b53dc0a831166-1.html#unique-entry-id-1http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/faab59f265ffb0cf675b53dc0a831166-1.html#unique-entry-id-1
The price cuts were welcome though :-)

It was interesting that the reason given by investors for dumping Apple price was the fact that Steve Jobs looked sickly. Talk about a one-man brand!!
]]>roy_rajib@yahoo.comRandom Notes2008-09-07T22:57:56-04:00http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/fe298293364da5b5ba64268bc34772ff-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.rajibroy.com/page59/files/fe298293364da5b5ba64268bc34772ff-0.html#unique-entry-id-0“Only I can bring change to Washington, McCain and Obama each claim”. It seems like both Senator Obama and Senator McCain are threatening to "change Washington". I suspect this is not the first time Presidential candidates have promised to change Washington.

Which brings me to an interesting point. What goes thru the minds of all those Senators and Congressmen when both candidates essentially make the point that these old-timers have been running this nation all the wrong way so far? I am sure there are like - "What? You think we have got it all wrong. And now, you want us to help you win the election?" Actually, more likely, they go like "Yep! Heard that, seen that before."]]>